Benjamin Brandreth

Benjamin Brandreth
Benjamin Brandreth portrait (oil on canvas) circa 1870
Born	23 June 1809 Newtown, Derbyshire, England
Died	18 February 1880 Ossining, New York
Nationality	British-American
Known for	Pioneering modern mass merchandising and advertising in the sale of patent medicine

Benjamin Brandreth (1809–1880) was a pioneer in the early use of mass advertising to build consumer awareness of his product, a purgative that allegedly cured many ills by purging toxins out of the blood. He became a successful and wealthy businessman, bank president, and New York State Senator.

Brandreth was born in Newtown, Derbyshire, England, on 23 June 1809, the son of William Holmes (1775–1809) and Ann, née Brandreth (1785–1877). His father abandoned the family while Benjamin was young and he was raised by his mother and maternal grandfather William Brandreth, whose surname he adopted. He immigrated to the United States in 1835 with his three children shortly after the death of his second wife, Harriet Smallpage, hoping to find a bigger market than he had in England for his “Vegetable Universal Pill” invented by his grandfather, William Brandreth. The formula was a powerful cathartic and played off the popular notion that impurity of the blood was the source of many ills Establishing himself on Hudson Street in New York City, Brandreth eventually found success marketing his pills prompting a move to a larger facility which he built in Sing Sing (later Ossining, New York) in 1838. Brandreth was a pioneer in using the then-infant technique of mass advertising in building brand awareness to create a mass market for his product. Brandreth created and published a wide variety of advertising material for his pills, including a 224-page tome entitled The Doctrine of Purgation, Curiosities from Ancient and Modern Literature, from Hippocrates and Other Medical Writers. His advertising copy had a distinctly literary flavor which found favor with the public. Brandreth widely distributed his books and pamphlets throughout the country as well as taking copious advertising space in newspapers. Eventually his pills became one of the best selling patent medicines in the United States “…A congressional committee in 1849 reported that Brandreth was the nation’s largest proprietary advertiser… Between 1862 and 1863 Brandreth’s average annual gross income surpassed $600,000…” For fifty years Brandreth’s name was a household word in the United States Indeed, the Brandreth pills were so well known they received mention in Herman Melville's classic Moby-Dick.